The MX Moment: Part I
The MX Moment
EXPLORING COLD WAR HISTORY AND DEMOCRATIC FUTURES IN THE NUCLEAR WEST
Part I: Trinity
The View from Los Alamos
In my attempt to trace the complex map of military activity that has come to define life in postwar America I travel to the point of genesis for both the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. This road has led me to the mountains of northern New Mexico, and the broad expanse of the Parajito Plateau . Located thirty-five miles northwest of Santa Fe, the plateau floats above the Rio Grande valley, its back towards the dormant caldera of the Jimenez Mountains and its eyes looking east toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It is a quiet Sunday afternoon in the Los Alamos, the town that mushroomed on top of the plateau with the coming nuclear age. The air is warm, the mood peaceful, and in this moment I glimpse the motivations that led Doctor Robert Oppenheimer to hold such a deep attachment for this place.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and the acceleration of U.S. efforts to unlock the secrets of atomic power, Oppenheimer and Army Corp of Engineers Lieutenant General Leslie Groves had hand selected this site, and the lab constructed here would come to serve as the intellectual epicenter for all actions driving the Manhattan Project.
The Manhattan Project that has so intimately marked and defined Los Alamos had its roots in rapid advances in the emerging field of nuclear science that had grown exponentially in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1939 a group of German physicists made the crucial discovery that by bombarding a single atom with neutrons it was possible to split the fundamental bonds of matter and unleash the remarkably powerful forces that govern basic physics. Theorists quickly realized that if this process were undertaken with a relatively large amount of fissile matter the surge of power available could reshape the globe.
In America a group of some of the most preeminent nuclear scientists of their age, many of whom were refugees who had escaped the shadow of Nazi Germany, met to discuss the potential threat of an atomic Nazi Germany. This discussion took on even deeper resonance with the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March of 1939, a region known for containing the types of uranium deposits, which scientists prefigured might be central to future efforts made at unlocking the secrets of nuclear power.
Based on these emerging geopolitical realities a group of physicists led by Hungarian Leó Szilárd decided to take action. Szilárd began by approaching the world’s preeminent scientist at the time, Albert Einstein with the physicists concerns. Sensing the potential ramifications of Nazi nuclear science, Einstein agreed to lend his name and gravitas to the cause in the form of a letter to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The initial response from the White House was one of concern for the potential nuclear threat from Germany, but little real action was taken. A small amount of research funding was set aside for theoretical research on the long-term development of a nuclear weapon, but research and production efforts remained relatively idle until December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the second major global conflict of the century.
With America’s entrance into the war, not only was the entire engine of a depression-ravaged economy bent towards a new wartime effort, but executive department spending on the secret Manhattan Military District Project was given top priority. Army Corp of Engineers Lieutenant General, Leslie Groves was put in charge of overseeing the project, and under his watch a growing number of secret nuclear sites began to emerge across the North American landscape.
In Oak Ridge Tennessee an entire secret city emerged assigned with the task of enriching uranium ore through a complex process that involved isolating and concentrating the unstable Uranium 235 isotope from rocks of common, and more stable, Uranium 238.
To the west nuclear reactors were built at a site north of Richland, Washington called Hanford. Drawing on the abundant energy from the nearby Grand Coulee damn workers at Hanford were tasked with creating a usable supply of plutonium, which is among the most lethal, non-naturally occurring elements on Earth. The water and hydroelectric power that fueled Hanford is worth mentioning, because it provides a crucial insight into how the US government and military were able to draw on the abundant natural resources of the North American continent and bend them to help fuel an increasingly complex war economy. The hydroelectricity from the Grand Coulee not only powered the energy intensive work at Hanford, but was also fueled a dramatic increase in aluminum production, which in turn facilitated the building of more U.S. fighter planes. Ultimately, the United States “didn’t so much outmaneuver, outman, or outfight the Axis as simply out produce it.” (Reisner 164).
But while an unprecedented amount of money and resource was spent building the infrastructure needed to produce the materials needed for the atomic bomb, it was Los Alamos that was central to coordinating and driving the entire endeavor. Grove’s decision to enlist J. Robert Oppenheimer as the project leader for theoretical work on the project was controversial at the time, particularly as his record of academic achievement was dwarfed by other scientist serving on the project, many of whom were Nobel Prize winners. Yet, by most accounts Oppenheimer emerged as a respected leader among the scientists working and living at Los Alamos.
Today there are two sites in Los Alamos dedicated to relaying the city’s unique history. The first has been incorporated into the campus in which the Manhattan Project scientists worked. Named the Los Alamos Historical Museum it is a place “dedicated to preserving, protecting and interpreting the history of Los Alamos.” The exhibit space in the former lodge is displays a variety of historic artifacts from the war years. The interpretations that are offered are brief, and the narrative offered is chronological. The story begins with an explanation of the natural history of the region, before moving into a description of the first permanent (white) settlement on the plateau
The story of indigenous activity on the plateau prior to white settlement is sparse, though the prehistoric sites at nearby Bandelier National Monument suggest the importance native groups have invested in this place. The museum narrative threads its way through the Manhattan Project, and attempts to convey the realities faced by the various workers and lab assistants who are often forgot in the presence of such notable historic figures such as Oppenheimer, Szilárd, and Neils Bohr.
Outside the museum two statues of Oppenheimer and Groves stand facing a large public park. The scene, and general ambiance of Los Alamos, has a natural beauty that historian Mark Fiege explains is central to understanding the work that took place at Los Alamos. Fiege argues that while the final product born of the research conducted at Los Alamos is often thought of as the ultimate in dehumanizing weaponry, the motivations underwriting included “a passion for nature” which “motivated the atomic scientists to accumulate the knowledge and techniques that eventually allowed them to build the bomb.” (Fiege 583)
Reality for many of Los Alamos scientists had been shaped in the context of the “back to nature” national movement in the early 20th century, which coincided with the rise of recreational culture (a movement tinged with Romantic beliefs in the needed relief provided by “authentic” experiences in the natural world). Most of the Los Alamos scientists born in the context of the “back to nature” movement maintained involvement with recreational outdoor activities into adulthood and professional careers.
It was this appreciation for the natural world, as well as the physical act of walking and contemplating natural environments, that many of the Los Alamos scientists cultivated a sense of wonder for nature. This in turn led to crucial insights. This “sense of wonder” for nature manifested in their work at Los Alamos as “the experience of mountains and other environments inspired them, focused their minds, and helped them to understand matter, forces, energy, and light.” (Fiege 590).
Walking and taking in the scenery is an act that can still yield interesting insights at Los Alamos. A short walk north of the historic museum provides a view of the modern day Los Alamos Laboratory. Today the numerous buildings that make up the Los Alamos lab complex give a distinct impression of secrecy. It is a feeling that allies well with the second major museum in town, the Bradbury Science Museum. Named after Norris Bradbury, who was the successor to Oppenheimer when Los Alamos transitioned from a wartime project to permanent research facility after the war, the museum was first established in 1953, and expanded in the subsequent decades until moving into its current home in downtown Los Alamos in 1993. The museum’s mission is to provide information on work done at the lab, as well as an interpretation of the history of nuclear weapons development that has come to define the city.
The interpretive history offered at the Bradbury Museum never delves into the ethical issues of nuclear weapons, instead treating the nuclear world as an inevitable reality for which the United States was uniquely prepared to lead. It is a narrative that underscores a set of assumptions ascribing an almost religious feel to the belief in American exceptionalism
Nowhere is this more evident than in the exhibit hall entitled “Defense – Strengthening Global Security.” This space attempts to convey the technological achievements of Los Alamos, as well as the crucial nature of the work being conducted within a larger national security context. One exhibit explains how plutonium is made and the unique properties that make it so highly prized by nuclear scientists and weapon developers. A massive metal container provides visual evidence of the space needed to house the 95.4 metric tons of plutonium that the U.S. has created since World War II. Another exhibit speaks to the thread that connects the intellectual activities that take place in Los Alamos and their reality on the ground at the Nevada Test Site. At yet another station various missile bodies and warhead designs show the product born out of the nature of work that takes place here.
A separate exhibit space named “the History Gallery” speaks to the history of the lab as well as various landmarks on the global nuclear timeline. The information presented isn’t that unlike what is being offered at the Los Alamos Historical Museum except for the observable fact that the Bradbury is performing its function on a much larger budget. Moving through the exhibit I was struck by the fact that any attempt to put a human face on the destroyed Japanese cities and bodies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been completely left out of the narrative, as have the stories of human and animal abuses born of testing performed by the lab at the Nevada Test Site. Instead, the story being offered is one of increasing technical achievement and progress.
The narrative that unfolds at the Bradbury draws a line and creates a dichotomy in reactions to nuclear weapons. On one side are those who see nuclear expansion as another hopeful chapter in the story of American exceptionalism. To this way of thinking the dropping of the bomb on Japan, while devastating, served a greater good. The line of argument based on this set of assumptions generally posits that by forcing a quick Japanese surrender through atomic force inevitably saved many lives (Japanese and American) had the war been allowed to play out longer. What is generally left out of this line of argumentation are the possibilities that the decision to drop the bomb were aimed just as squarely at emerging geopolitical realities, namely emerging tensions with Soviet Russia. In a reality tempered by such complicated realities the decision to use the bomb becomes far more troubled and far less patriotic.
Positioned squarely on the opposite side of this blindly patriotic position is the anti-nuclear rhetoric that has historically positioned the bomb as a cudgel through which Cold War America was mercilessly pounded into reality. Yet, rhetorical appeals such as this do risk leaning too heavily on logic that risks the unintended effect of joining in a dialogue with pro-nuclear weapon lines of argumentation. By legitimizing the power, and thus the presumed need, anti-nuclear rhetoric has the potential to reinforce counter claims for both nuclear weapons and a powerful military.
The stories offered by the museums of Los Alamos both do an effective job of presenting chronological moments on the nuclear map, but provide little interpretation that deviates anywhere beyond an endorsed sanctioning of the work achieved by the lab, often advertised as 20th century progress. The joy and wonder that Fiege describes is also left out of the narrative, a position that formalizes an assumption of nuclear weapons as the ultimate in dehumanized technology. The MX missile offers a powerful object lesson in how brutally the wonder of science, and hope for a safer planet born at Los Alamos, had been stripped to a formulaic engineering problem (with accompanying projections that dehumanized potential targets). Cold War realities had placed nuclear technologies firmly under the control and auspices of the military by the time the MX missile emerged, and it is to this moment that I now turn.
The Mechanistic MX
When Utah Governor Scott Matheson appeared before the before the federal Subcommittee on Military Construction on November 5, 1979 the statement he offered reveals that the first reservations over the proposed MX missile system had begun to creep into his mind. This change in his position underscores the almost hypnotic ability that MX and its unprecedented scope had on shifting opinions. When President Jimmy Carter was elected to office in 1977 it was on a platform featuring a plank promising an effort to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Within two years, on September 7, 1979, his priorities had shifted dramatically, to the point that he was proposing a military construction project in the deserts of Utah and Nevada that multiple military planners were calling “mans largest construction project.”
One year before appearing and providing his testimony in Cedar City, Governor Matheson himself had sent a letter to U.S. Air Force officials stating Utah’s interest in the project and remarking that “the proposed missile launch site in southern Nevada and Utah will have very little impact socially, economically or environmentally within the state.”
Since Carter’s announcement it had become abundantly clear that even with the potential economic benefit of the $30 to $100 billion dollars of federal funds slated to pour into the region during construction, the social and environmental impacts could not be passed of glibly as having “little impact.” Matheson’s mood in 1979 is reflected both the general discontent voiced in constituent correspondence to his office, as well as in a survey on MX conducted in the form of a questionnaire by the office of federal Utah representative Dan Marriott. Of the 13,563 individual responses to that questionnaire survey, 56% voiced opposition to the MX proposal in Utah, with the most common concern being that “the system would negatively affect the environment of Utah, taking land, water, energy and other resources the state needs for other purposes.”
The MX project itself had been in the motion for years. Initially viewed as the successor to the Minuteman missiles that had dotted the Great Plains in the 1960’s, work on the MX design had taken nearly a decade before the discussion turned to the best methods for basing it. The MX missile design included a multi-stage rocket with separate components that were built by Utah companies Hercules and Thiokol. These rockets were fitted with ten thermonuclear warheads, each with a yield of over 300 kilotons. The payload of the MX was three times larger than the Minuteman missile it was scheduled to replace in the US arsenal, but designers had placed the highest premium not on yield, but on accuracy. They proudly boasted that each warhead had the capability of hitting within 300 feet of its target.
It is critical to note that for Scott Matheson (and much of the nation) the purported military need for MX wasn’t at issue. From 1979 to 1981 Matheson maintained a firm position that military planners were correct in asserting that the country needed the missile. After the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty of 1972 both Soviet and U.S. technological advances had led to a dramatic rise in Cold War arms and arms spending. US military officials promoted the idea that should spending and increases continue along the same path through the 1980’s the missile gap between the Soviets and US would become large enough that a situation could arise in which the Soviets might find a tactical first strike advantageous.
As late as 1981 outgoing correspondence from Matheson’s office stated his position on the MX need stating, “I do not feel that we can close the door on legitimate national defense needs, but neither do I believe that we must sacrifice our land or heritage in the name of national defense.” This statement is revealing in that it validates that the missile itself wasn’t being questioned, but rather the method for basing it. This was a line of criticism and challenge that was effectively utilized by both Matheson as well as much of the opposition that would mushroom throughout the Great Basin in the wake of Carter’s basing announcement.
Over the course of the two years that the U.S. Air Force studied MX basing in the Great Basin multiple options were explored. The scheme that had the largest impact on both the cultural imagination, and practical environmental impact statement planning, was a version referred to formally as the “multiple protective shelter” (MPS) design, and informally as the “racetrack model.”
For as daunting as the MX missile itself was in its destructive scope, the MPS basing method surpassed it in terms of sheer audaciousness. Calling for the construction of 4600 shelters into which an MX missile might be stored, U.S. Air Force planner proposed that these shelters be scattered across Utah and Nevada in the form of 200 individual oval racetracks measuring 15 to 30 miles around with 23 bases per racetrack. In this scheme a lone MX missile would be assigned to each racetrack and would spend its life shuffling between shelters. The idea was commonly called a version of “the old shell game” by military officials and rested on the logic that should the Soviets ever initiate a first strike it would be on a system actively engaged in keeping its missile locations moving and secret. Thus, not knowing what individual base any given MX missile might be housed in the Soviets would either have to unload a strategically unwise portion of their arsenal into the MX system or continue to engage the US in the act of deterrence underwritten by the overarching Cold War truism of mutually assured destruction.
Almost immediately oppositional voices began seizing upon the unspoken, but clear reality that the MPS proposals essentially made the Great Basin desert an enormous target for Soviet ICBM’s. The sheer audacity of the MX and MPS specifications gave rise to voices in opposition to the continued buildup of military weapons and systems on the western landscape.
The specifications for the MPS system that became a common ground for opposition voices to stand against were equally daunting. Early on the USAF identified 24,000 miles of geo-technically suitable land in North America for the MX with a vast majority of those miles found in the largely federal public domain of the Great Basin. The term “geo-technically suitable” meant that the land wasn’t steep and had a covering of at least fifty feet of topsoil above bedrock or groundwater. Air Force officials went out of the way to sale the idea that while 24,000 miles of area were identified, the MX itself would only need to utilize 7,000 of those for operations.
This troubling issue of land use was destined to become one of the most vexing problems for MX planners. In his September 1979 statement proposing the MX MPS, President Carter claimed that only 25 square miles of land would be completely removed from the public domain, a number that seemed completely at odds with the stated needs of MPS basing. The number arrived at by Carter is the total derived by adding up the physical space occupied by each shelter, which would be off limits to all but military personnel. Otherwise federal officials claimed that the 12,000 miles of service road built across the Great Basin to connect the MX apparatus would remain open and viable to the multi-use doctrine of public federal lands.
It is important to note that while the vast majority of those who expressed their opinions on MX to Matheson and other government officials were extremely opposed, there were many who looked on MX as both inevitable and potentially useful. Of those who defended bringing the MX to Utah, the most clearly articulated justification inevitably had to do with the economic benefits it would bring to the region. The president of Utah Resources International, John H. Morgan, wrote to Matheson in late 1979 saying, ““If we ever get into a missile war with the Soviet Union, there won’t be a safe person in the country. Here we have the opportunity to gain real economic progress in our state, and also make a patriotic contribution to our country.”
Ultimately the MX proposition provides a powerful object lesson in how brutally the wonder of science and hope for a better, safer planet that was born in the work done at Los Alamos had been stripped to a formulaic engineering problem under full military control. The MX missile system reveals evidence of how a system of unchecked military expansion and nuclear largess had grown and thrived on the western landscape in the intervening years between Los Alamos and Carter’s announcement in September 1979. An exploration of these nuances allows for the sort of critical thinking and questioning that should lie at the heart of an informed and participatory democracy.
Ground Zero
Turning again to the work done in New Mexico during World War II provides a chance to witness the pivotal first moments of both the military-industrial complex, as well as the expansion of government power that are linchpins in the MX drama that would play out on the Great Basin landscape over thirty years later.
The Manhattan Project was a threshold moment as it laid the groundwork for how a massive secret government project could be constructed and hidden from view. It provided for both a dramatic expansion of executive branch powers, as well as a means through which the covert funneling of massive amounts of taxpayer funds could be channeled to military ends. In this nexus of money and growth, the various sites on the Nuclear West map have emerged. In its wake the Manhattan Project created a new world, a place defined by new fears, new cultural anxieties, and new languages for how to process them.
Clearly, by the early 1980’s the idea of pouring unprecedented amounts of tax dollars into a nuclear project of unparalleled scale had become viable enough that the project wasn’t immediately laughed off the table. However, in the backlash that MX generated it offers potent insights into both the assumptions born of both Manhattan Project and Cold War thinking. It offers an opportunity to thoroughly audit and interrogate the physical costs. It provides a moment to assess how an unorthodox (yet highly effective) opposition arose, and what that might say for future oppositional endeavors. The MX record reveals how citizens, both informed and working within the democratic channels available to them, were able to make an impact, though some have argued that it has had little effect but to force the military to tighten controls, something that might be reflected in how the sites (and archives) of the Manhattan Project and Cold War are presented to the public.
What transpired in the desert of central New Mexico in the early morning hours of July 16, 1945 ushered in a new world, with completely redefined realities. The scientists of Los Alamos had been planning events at Trinity as early as a year in advance. Work at the lab had produced the design for two separate bombs. The first, codenamed Little Boy, relied on a gun ignition design. Effectively a highly fissile piece of enriched uranium 235 would trigger and slam into a separate chunk of the charged material. Scientists were almost certain that this design would work, to the point that a test wasn’t scheduled.
What wasn’t so certain was the second design, codenamed ‘Fat Man.” The theory governing Fat Man held that if enough densely packed traditional explosives were detonated around a core of plutonium it would force the lethal matter inward with enough pressure that a critical mass could be achieved. Fearing that the explosives would detonate, but fail to produce the critical mass, and instead scatter the rare plutonium across the landscape, Oppenheimer and Groves proceeded with plans to select a test site that was close enough transport materials from Los Alamos yet remote enough to provide the type of secrecy that had colored the project from its beginnings. They found such a place 222 miles south of the lab on the Alamogordo Gunnery Range.
Today the Army has jurisdiction over the small slice of desert upon which the Trinity test took place in the early morning hours of July 16, 1945. The former Alamogordo gunnery range has been transformed into the even more secretive White Sands Missile Range. The active tests that occur here on a consistent basis provide the military with plausible reasons to restrict and control access to the site. Twice a year, on the first Saturday of April and the first Saturday of October, the northern Stallion Gate checkpoint is opened on the north side of the range at the same moment that tourist buses disembark from the city of Alamogordo to the south. As this is the ground zero upon which the realities of a nuclear world emerged, I know that any attempt to understand and situate something as tangled and complicated as the MX Missile would be lacking without walking on the site, and experiencing the place where it all began with my own senses.
The romanticism of language makes a valiant attempt to accurately describe the desert that surrounds the Trinity site. Driving across the Jornada del Muerto desert, which translates to the Journey of Death, I begin to notice an increase in traffic and cars with various state license plates. Following the directions printed from the U.S. Army website the road twists and bends until a small cluster of buildings appear on the horizon. Drawing closer the scene at the security gate is purposefully intimidating.
Military personnel direct traffic and separate cars into two single columns of traffic. Employees dressed in button up shirts sporting a White Sands Missile Range stop each vehicle long enough to hand out literature on the site, and instruct each driver to have their identification ready for the armed guards at the gate. In addition to a brief narrative that provides a summary of the momentous history that permeates the Trinity Site, there is a single page handout that spells out the expected rules of behavior for the site. The list includes prohibitions on engaging in any activism at the site or making political speeches. It is a forceful reminder of who controls this place and the exact storyline that is expected to dominate here..
As I inch my car to towards the gate a soldier motions for me to stop. I hand him my driver’s licenses, which he states at intensity before looking up to match the photograph with my face. He asks if I have any weapons or alcohol in the vehicle. When I say no he tells me to proceed with the caveat that I am not allowed to deviate from the main road, or stop and take pictures of anything on the site until I arrive at Ground Zero. Pulling forward I notice a silver Astrovan with Texas plates that has been pulled to the side. The driver is conversing with a soldier at the same moment he is pulling the distinctive shape of a rifle briefcase from the back of his vehicle.
The rigidity of military control that permeates Trinity stands out in dramatic relief against the democracy and openness of Manhattan Project scientists. Chief among these was the eminent Danish physicist Neils Bohr who looked upon the scientific enterprise as the ultimate expression of effective democracy. For Bohr one of the greatest joys and opportunities provided by the scientific method and practice was the chance to test and work with community and high democratic ideals. The results of pure science didn’t necessarily fit any political agenda or ideology, but rather bent and shaped culture and ideology to its provable findings. Likewise, the adherents of scientific ideals and practice could come from anywhere, a fact underscored by disparate group of individuals that included women and many minorities that advanced nuclear theory, many of whom had to flee Europe in the face of Nazi oppression.
Sadly, the subversion of such high-minded hopes in democracy by events unfolding from the Manhattan Project is reflected in the prism of Neils Bohr’s life in the post-War. Prior to the war his adherence to the high democratic ideals of science led to an often-noted attitude of openness and cooperation among those who studied with him (nicknamed the Copenhagen Spirit). After Trinity proved that the bomb was a feasible reality, Bohr approached President Roosevelt with his concerns of a nuclear future. His proposition to the president was that the openness and democracy of science demanded that the secrets born of work at Los Alamos must be shared with the world, and that through the democracy of international cooperation the power of nuclear technology might be utilized to improve the conditions for all humanity. Instead, in the immediate post-war period of military secrecy, Bohr and his aspirations for democratic openness quickly came under suspicion. This new reality would come to haunt several of the Los Alamos scientists in the post-war period, perhaps none more tragically than Oppenheimer who over the course of a decade after Trinity lost all of his security clearances and garnered vicious suspicion for past leftists leanings.
As I drive the road from the Stallion Gate entrance to the Trinity site I notice periodic side roads that appear to turn off and lead into vast desert emptiness. Aside from the periodic Yucca stand and low sagebrush I can’t imagine what I could stop and photograph in this immense space that would compromise national security in any meaningful way.
The road through White Sands winds its way south until a military police truck with its lights on forces all traffic due east. In the distance I can see a massive chain-link fence that has been circularly stretched around the Ground Zero site. A swarm of miniature tourist bodies swarm around the perimeter. The free information book that was handed out at the gate recites stories from those who witnessed the test, many from the vantage point that I currently occupy. The sublime explosion and surreal appearance of two suns was the major memory cited by numerous witnesses to Trinity. Others reflected on the low rumbling explosion that bounced off the nearby mountains and filled in the quiet spaces of the desert. I am struck at how close the nearest eastern mountain range is to Ground Zero, a natural barrier that underscores how walled in and secret this site was, and still is.
Approaching the site a makeshift parking lot comes into view, and I am struck by the critical mass of human beings that have made pilgrimage to this place. The motivations that would bring to this place are undoubtedly diverse, a reality that has existed here since the Army first began to allow visitors on the fiftieth anniversary of the test on July 16, 1995. Nuclear anthropologists Hugh Gusterson was there for that initial opening, and the orderly scene I see bears nothing in common with his reflections on the heated arguments between pro and anti-nuclear protestors.
Outside of the fenced perimeter that surrounds Ground Zero a small market has sprung to life. In addition to portable bathroom facilities, there is a table selling bottled water and snacks, a concession stand selling t-shirts and assorted Trinity memorabilia, and a National Park ranger who has fashioned a small bookstore out of the back of his truck. Each of these spots is swarmed, and numerous tourists are walking around with newly purchased t-shirts of varying day-glow neon complete with an iconic image of the blast, a rendered photo of the current monument, and the word TRINITY emblazoned boldly across the chest.
Crowds of people mill around the makeshift market as well as the only other visible artifact that exists outside the fenced perimeter. It is a massive metal tube with jagged metal edges on either side. An interpretive sign explains how this artifact (named “Jumbo”) was originally meant to house the Trinity device. With the fear that the Fatman design might fail the scientist at Los Alamos devised Jumbo as a failsafe. It was theorized that by detonating the bomb inside this metal beast safe containment would be achieved should critical mass fail to occur. And if it did occur, Jumbo would simply get vaporized in the flash of a blast that would momentarily burn hotter than the surface of the sun. A historic photo and caption explains how with the test date approaching scientists felt confident enough that the device would work that the Jumbo idea was scrapped. Instead, it was hung from its own tower 800 yards away from the tower at Ground Zero. A black and white photo reveals the aftermath of the blast, which managed to completely obliterate the support scaffolding supporting Jumbo, but left metal behemoth intact and highly irradiated. How it ended up broken and laying at the site today entails another military adventure where Army personnel decided to detonate five bombs inside the casing at once. The subsequent explosion blew off both ends, and rendered Jumbo effectively useless. Eager tourists walk through the hollow space of the interior and pose for pictures inside the nuclear relic.
Passing through a severe looking gate that opens onto the ground zero trail I begin a half-mile walk toward the site. The path is maintained on either side by razor wire fences which sport forbidding signs that read “KEEP OUT.” The familiar blue and yellow design of nuclear fallout signs that read “CAUTION: RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS” appear intermittently along the fencing as well, a testament to the long memory nuclear activity leaves on a place.
As I approach the site of Ground Zero another sign comes into view that admonishes visitors to not remove remnant pieces of Trinitite from the test area. Originally created by the intense heat from the blast, Trinitite is the name for the radioactive green and opaque glass that was fused when desert sand met nuclear heat. The government bulldozed the majority of it away and buried it in other Nuclear West strongholds long ago, but small fragments still litter the area. Only 25 miles north, at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, two pieces of dusty Trinitite are on display in the campus mineral museum, along with a collectible box that they were once sold in, again speaking to the commercial value and relentless human entrepreneurship that has often taken root in the radioactive sands of the Nuclear West.
In addition to the monument marking Ground Zero, the Army has set up other exhibits within this fenced space. A hollow replica of the Fat Man bomb sits on a trailer bed. To the west sits a low metal shed. A sign attached states that the shed covers a preserved sliver of the desert floor as it looked after the explosion. However, the observation window has been covered and locked shut, and the sign informs tourists that today the floor is covered with sand and is indistinguishable from we see around us, a small act of reclamation by the desert.
A series of historic photographs from the Manhattan Project-era have been hung along the fence that surrounds Ground Zero. These photographs document both the people and the support areas that sustained the Manhattan Project and Trinity, as well as the famous images of the Trinity shot as it sprang into haunting life. The photographic series reveals multiple iterations of the Trinity fireball. As it explodes and changes into a variety of eerie shapes in the photographs, I feel the pull of the sublime in attempting to unravel the fact that each took place in the microcosm of a millionth of a second.
Mixed among the photographs that hang on the fence there is an iconic aerial image that was taken shortly after the blast. It shows the size and extent of the crater that was formed, a grim specter that would foreshadow the damage left less than one month later in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is to that aerial view, and the remote desert site where the bombing raids that would translate military testing to military application that I now turn on this ongoing journey through MX and the Nuclear West.
Sources
Fetter-Vorm, Jonathan. Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012.
Fiege, Mark. The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012.
Glass, Matthew. Citizens Against the MX: Public Languages in the Nuclear Age. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Gusterson, Hugh. “Nuclear Tourism.” Journal of Cultural Research 8 (2004): 23-31.
Klingle, Matthew. Emerald City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
The MX ICBM Shell Game [Video]. (2009). Retrieved November 19, 2012, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44zytG8O40w
Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
Solnit, Rebecca. Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Landscape Wars of the American West. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Utah State Archives and Records Service, Governor (1977-1985: Matheson), MX missile records, series 1646.
Utah State Archives and Records Service, School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, MX missile project records, series 17728.
Utah State Archives and Records Service, Governor (1977-1985: Matheson), MX missile records, series 1646.
Utah State Archives and Records Service, Governor (1977-1985: Matheson), MX missile records, series 1646.